Wrapping Up The 2012 AMSOIL Great American CT Tour

Not only are we back home, I can report, but we are just about to embark on our 2013 Tour leaving in just one week from this writing. Our 2012 Tour was fantastic and we learned a lot in many different areas connected with short track racing in America. This is a compilation of some of the major points and discoveries that we came across.

2/15It was very hot at State Park Speedway, but the kids stayed cool under a water sprinkler system setup just behind the grandstands. I almost joined them.

The 2012 Tour was unique in several different ways. First, it was extremely hot in the first couple of months, mostly in Wisconsin. There were races that were cancelled due to the heat, but fortunately not any on our schedule. It would soon get much cooler to the west.

We had to stay in Wisconsin for five weeks due to the sheer number of racetracks there and to adequately visit the significant ones, most being significant. We often attended multiple tracks in a weekend and even went to four different tracks in a row from Thursday through Sunday criss-crossing the state.

We endured and finally said goodbye to Wisconsin and were off to Montana. In order to fulfill all of our territories and get in 25 races in four months, we had to skip North and South Dakota. It is what it is. And let's face it, there are not that many tracks in those two states. Still we would have like to have been able to make it up there. Who knows? Perhaps some time in the not so distant future.

Next stop was Montana and we hit Montana Raceway Park for a big event and then Gallatin Speedway. In between were some of the most beautiful mountains you'll see anywhere. We traveled through the Glacier National Park in our Jeep Wrangler one day and I would recommend that trip to anyone to do just once in your life.

Once we left Montana, our next stop was Wyoming and we visited Yellowstone Park, Gillette Speedway, and Casper Speedway dirt tracks. These two tracks were out there as far as location. The view from the pits was mostly vast expanses of nothing but tan dirt and rocks.

We would see this again when we went to New Mexico and strangely enough, there was a certain unique beauty in all of that "nothing." I can't really describe it, but the feeling was there.

On down I-25 toward Denver we went, staying in the Lakeside KOA in Fort Collins, Colorado, for about three weeks while we hit area tracks and took in the Rocky Mountains from places like Estes Park and Frisco. We needed a few days off after all of that traveling and this provided the perfect setting for us.

Once we recuperated, we headed out again south to stay in Raton, New Mexico, for a few days before continuing on to Albuquerque. We visited the I-25 Speedway and then NAPA Speedway, two asphalt tracks. I was surprised that NAPA didn't draw more teams because the large city of Albuquerque was nearby.

9/15We even visited the home track of our beloved Tour sponsor. In addition to the track sponsorship, AMSOIL even has its own dirt track series across the Midwest in association with WISSOTA.

Once we finished our duties in New Mexico, it was on up the road to the north and east through Kansas to our stopping point near Topeka. From our camp site at the KOA, we were in range of three dirt tracks.

Lakeside Speedway, outside Kansas City, overcame a huge flood in 2011 to return to service and continue the tradition of racing there. While we were there they put on a large Modified event and we attended the Friday night portion before leaving the next morning for Heartland Park.

The dirt track at the Heartland Park facility drew good numbers of racers and fans. There is also a large road course and dragstrip there. For our part, we enjoyed the great racing action involving many different classes.

Our last race event of the 2012 Tour was a surprise in that Salina Speedway was a revived track that had been “dead” for a few years, long enough for trees to grow in the pits and infield of the track.

Tommy Hendrickson took over as promoter two years ago as an act of passion and was determined to make it work. His plan worked very well indeed. For the show we attended, more than 100 cars were in attendance and the completion could not have been better.

Conclusion

Time and time again this past year we were amazed at some of the innovation and effort put into the promotion of racetracks. If you thought every promoter was just sitting back and not moving forward, that simply is not true.

We have shown and explained so many new promotional ideas we have come across over these past three years. If you own or promote a racetrack, read these stories, and aren't able to make your track better because of them, you might be a redneck.

We have traveled over an entire year so far before the final 2013 Tour even begins. The Tour bus now has about 50,000 Tour miles on it and my Jeep has more than that. We expect to find more and varied tricks of the trade that we can share.